What other cities can teach Chicago

I've been reading up on what happened to other cities that believed the promises. Cincinnati. St. Louis. Oakland. San Diego. The stories aren't pretty. And they sound awfully familiar.

By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-01-21

I've been reading up on what happened to other cities that believed the promises. Cincinnati. St. Louis. Oakland. San Diego. The stories aren't pretty. And they sound awfully familiar.

If Chicago is going to make a decision about stadium funding, we should at least look at what happened when other cities made similar decisions. Not the press releases. The aftermath.

Cincinnati: the deal that ate a county

Everyone who studies stadium economics ends up at Cincinnati eventually. It's the case study that won't go away.

In 1996, Hamilton County voters approved a sales tax increase to build new stadiums for the Bengals and Reds. The promise: $2.2 billion in economic impact over 30 years. A transformed riverfront. A revitalized downtown.

What they got instead: a county financial crisis.

The stadiums came in over budget. The operating costs exceeded projections. By 2011, Hamilton County was cutting mental health services and laying off workers to meet stadium debt payments. The county's credit rating dropped. Basic services suffered.

And the Bengals? They played terrible football for two decades while paying $0 in rent. Mike Brown's franchise value went from roughly $400 million to over $3 billion. The public paid. The owner profited. The promised transformation never arrived.

Economists who studied Hamilton County found no measurable economic benefit from either stadium. Employment growth, income growth, tax revenue growth all tracked regional trends. The stadiums didn't move the needle.

Twenty-five years later, the area around Paul Brown Stadium still looks like... parking lots. The hotels and restaurants and mixed-use development that was supposed to spring up? Still waiting.

St. Louis: the city that got abandoned anyway

St. Louis did everything the NFL asked. The city built the Edward Jones Dome in 1995, financed largely by taxpayers. The promise: the Rams were staying, and a modern stadium would anchor downtown development.

For twenty years, St. Louis paid. The city subsidized the Rams through a lease that became increasingly unfavorable as the stadium aged. When the "state-of-the-art" clause kicked in, requiring upgrades to keep the facility in the top tier of NFL stadiums, the price tag kept climbing.

Then Stan Kroenke decided he wanted Los Angeles anyway.

The Rams left in 2016. All that public investment, all those years of subsidies, all those promises about staying — and the team just moved. St. Louis was left with an empty dome and debt to pay.

The lesson here is brutal. Public investment doesn't buy loyalty. Stadium subsidies don't prevent relocation. If an owner wants to leave, they'll leave. The money you gave them becomes their equity somewhere else.

St. Louis voters learned this the hard way. They rejected a $400 million proposal for a new stadium in the team's final years, having already been burned once. Kroenke left anyway and built his $5.5 billion palace in Inglewood with his own money.

Worth noting: he could have done that in St. Louis too. He chose not to.

Oakland: calling the bluff

Oakland is an interesting case because the city finally said no.

For decades, Oakland played the stadium game. They built Mt. Davis to keep the Raiders in the 1990s, adding seats and luxury boxes to the Coliseum. The taxpayers paid. The deal was terrible. The Raiders stayed for a while, then started shopping for better offers.

When Las Vegas showed up with $750 million in hotel taxes, Oakland couldn't match it and didn't try. The Raiders moved in 2020.

Here's what didn't happen: Oakland didn't collapse. The sun still rose. The city still exists. The A's are gone too now, headed to Las Vegas as well, and Oakland is figuring out its future without either team.

Was losing the Raiders painful? Sure. Is Oakland's identity erased? Obviously not. The city has problems and opportunities that have nothing to do with professional football. The narrative that cities die without NFL teams is a story teams tell to extract subsidies. It's not reality.

Oakland's lesson: sometimes the smart move is letting them go.

San Diego: the voters who said enough

San Diego had the Chargers for 56 years. Then the Spanos family wanted a new stadium. The city balked at the price tag.

In 2016, San Diego voters rejected Measure C, which would have raised hotel taxes to fund a $1.8 billion stadium and convention center. The vote wasn't even close. 57% said no.

The Chargers left for Los Angeles in 2017. Dean Spanos moved his team to a city where they've struggled to find fans ever since. The Chargers play in SoFi Stadium as tenants, having essentially become the second team in a market that was supposed to be theirs.

Meanwhile, San Diego... is fine. The city has used the stadium site for other purposes. Tourism didn't collapse. The economy didn't crash. Life continued.

What San Diego voters understood: there's a limit to what a team is worth. When the ask gets too big, the answer should be no. Being sentimental about a team doesn't mean writing blank checks for billionaires.

The pattern repeats

Every city thinks their situation is different. They all believe their projections are accurate, that their leadership is smarter, that their deal is structured better.

And then they get Cincinnati or St. Louis.

The academic research is clear. More than 130 studies have examined stadium subsidies. The consensus: they don't pay off. Economic impact projections are inflated by factors of ten to twenty. Jobs created are temporary and low-wage. Neighborhood development doesn't materialize. The promised returns don't arrive.

The only consistent winner is the team owner. Franchise values have exploded while taxpayers absorbed the risk. The Vikings' value went from $800 million to $4.7 billion after U.S. Bank Stadium opened. The Bengals' value went from $400 million to $3 billion while Hamilton County cut services to pay their bills.

This isn't a mystery. It's a documented pattern.

What this means for Chicago

Kevin Warren learned his playbook in Minnesota. He ran the leverage strategy that cycled between sites, floated relocation threats, and secured $498 million in public financing for the Vikings. Now he's running the same plays in Chicago.

Multiple sites. Urgency. Economic projections. Infrastructure framing. Super Bowl promises. The script doesn't change because the script works.

But the outcomes don't change either. Minneapolis got one Super Bowl in nine years of stadium operation. The neighborhood around U.S. Bank Stadium remains parking lots and highway ramps. The promised development? Still waiting.

Chicago is being asked to follow the path that led Cincinnati to a fiscal crisis and left St. Louis with an empty dome. Every academic economist who studies this stuff says it leads nowhere good.

We don't have to make this mistake.

The questions to ask

Next time someone tells you a stadium will transform Chicago, ask them about Cincinnati. Ask why independent economists consistently find results ten times smaller than what boosters promise. Ask why Hamilton County had to cut mental health services to pay stadium bonds. Ask whether St. Louis' decades of subsidies prevented the Rams from leaving.

Other cities have answered these questions with their tax dollars and their regrets. Chicago can learn from them or join them.

I know which choice makes sense.